We have found that texting through Signal Vine is the most successful means of communicating vital and timely information to both high school seniors and college freshmen.
The Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance (LOSFA) is a Program of the Louisiana Board of Regents that strives to be Louisiana’s first choice for college access by promoting, preparing for and providing equity of college access. LOSFA administers the state’s scholarship and grant programs and the state’s Internal Revenue Code Section 529 college savings program.
Challenges
Thousands of students receive scholarships through LOSFA each year, and a small staff team is responsible for communicating information about its programs to all high school and college students in the state.
In recent years, sending students information about scholarships through email and snail mail wasn’t working. Students frequently forgot to renew their scholarships and became ineligible for new scholarship opportunities. As a result, students in Louisiana had to drop out of college because they couldn’t afford higher education.
Implementing Modern Campus Signal Vine
Text messages are tailored to students based on whether they’re in high school or college.
High school messages
LOSFA texts high school seniors information and reminders about upcoming deadlines, including ACT registration, FAFSA completion and scholarship applications. Advisors also offer college application assistance on a one-on-one basis for students who text in for help.
The goal is to help more students in the state plan for and attend college.
College messages
Most students who lose their eligibility for TOPS, Louisiana's merit scholarship program, do so within their first year of college. So early outreach is critical to students' success.
LOSFA introduces the texting program to students during their first semester by sending reminders and resources regarding TOPS eligibility. Student also learn that they can send questions directly to LOSFA staff for one-on-one support.
Results
In its two years of using Signal Vine, LOSFA has communicated with more than 50,000 high school seniors, first-year college students and their families. Louisiana residents now have stronger opportunities for an affordable college education.
LOSFA measures student engagement and message response rates in the Signal Vine dashboard. The average engagement rate for high school seniors is extremely high; 76% of seniors in the program have texted back at least once.
In particular, the retention rate for TOPS, Louisiana’s premier merit-based scholarship, has increased significantly since LOSFA began texting reminders and alerts to first-year students. As a result, the rate of persistence into the second year of college has also improved.
Based on these successes, LOSFA continues to increase the number of students and families they support through Signal Vine conversational text messaging.
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About Modern Campus
Modern Campus is obsessed with empowering its nearly 2,000 higher education customers to thrive when radical transformation is required to respond to lower student enrollments and revenue, rising costs, crushing student debt, and administrative complexity.
The Modern Campus engagement platform powers solutions for non-traditional student management, web content management, catalog and curriculum management, student engagement and development, conversational text messaging, career pathways, and campus maps and virtual tours. The result: innovative institutions can create a learner-to-earner lifecycle that engages modern learners for life, while providing modern administrators with the tools needed to streamline workflows and drive high efficiency.
Learn how Modern Campus is leading the modern learner engagement movement at moderncampus.com and follow us on LinkedIn.